The Beginnings: '78-'79

To break into politics, gay students first had to let go of the self-imposed secrecy that had been their only defense in a hostile environment. Patrick J. Flaherty '83, treasurer of GSA, says. "Secrecy was our greatest enemy. The first step to being political is not being afraid to make a public stand. On other campuses I have visited, the students refuse to have their names in the paper, they are unwilling to do anything that will involve publicity." The opening scene for the movement then, Flaherty believes, was the day Ben Schatz "was willing to say out loud, 'I am gay.' That has made all the difference."

Schatz remembers his step out of the closet with less enthusiasm. "The thing that got me started was that I came out and started to lose friends. And it made me very angry." What saved him, Schatz believes, was a "stubborn" attitude. "If other people thought I was peculiar, then I thought there was something wrong with them. Most people, unfortunately, do not feel that way."

Despite the internal self-assurance, Schatz and students like him who were "coming out," still felt the need to band together. Schatz moved to Adams House ("None of my straight classmates wanted to go there that year, because of its gay reputation," he remembers with a grim smile.) That year, Schatz says, the first "gay clique" formed in Adams House. When he first moved in, the students who were a year older--the first group of open gays at Harvard--kept up their spirits and challenged the prejudices of fellow students by "being outrageous," Schatz remembers. "It was an attack on people's pettiness," a sort of short-lived avant-garde rebellion.

"Being outrageous" involved, among other things, dressing in drag--a display that got a gay student assaulted in Tommy's Lunch late one night last year by a man sitting in the next booth. Assaults then and now are not uncommon. Two Harvard gay students were badly beaten in the subway this spring when an angry passerby spotted them arm in arm. "Being outrageous" also included behavior which would not seem especially flamboyant if committed by heterosexual couples--like holding hands in the dining hall or on the street, and kissing each other hello in public.

In the first of many excursions out of the protected world of GSA's Saturday night dances at Phillips Brooks House (PBH), Schatz and a few other Adams House friends would try going to House parties, attempting to integrate Harvard social life with tactics reminiscent of 1960s Freedom Riders. "So many times, I remember, we would go to a Mather House party, start dancing and the party would stop all of a sudden and we would be told to leave. It was pretty ridiculous; there were four of us out of 40 people at a party and people would get upset and say. 'The gays are taking over.'"

That summer Schatz started out as a Bloomingdale stockboy, got fed up, quit and then went to Washington to canvas for the equal rights amendment with the National Women's Political Caucus. His introduction to activism by way of feminist politicking, coupled with the news of the impending National March for Gays and Lesbians, catalyzed Schatz' political college career. "I decided I would come back to Harvard and organize for the march," he says.

Organizing for the march entailed presenting himself publicly as an interested party, and Schatz remembers the first awkward announcement. He was taking Government 133. "The Politics of Women's Liberation," and wanted to tack up a poster announcing the march. After posting it on the bulletin board one day before a lecture, Ethel Klein, assistant professor of Government and professor of the course, suggested he announce it to the class. "I thought to myself, 'What!, before all these people?'" But he did, and all went well.

As Schatz's name began to circulate as an openly gay student who was willing to make his name public for the sake of organizing for gay rights, other privately gay students timidly sought him out as a confidante. In the next four years, Schatz became a folk hero and a sign of a change in the political climate. "We all owe Ben a great deal of gratitude," one gay graduate who asked that his name not be identified, says, adding. "He is a symbol for the politically aware generation."

Not everyone is so grateful; after Schatz's name appeared in a Boston Globe article on gays at Harvard, he received an anonymous letter threatening his life and attacking homosexuality in bitter and violent language. Schatz was shaken, but only temporarily: "I also got two fan letters this week; one death threat to two fan letters; that's not a bad record," he says.

In assembling the political machinery necessary, Schatz quickly learned he could not press GSA into service. "I knew if I wanted to be political, I had to be outside of GSA." So he founded GOOD and asked Gaye Williams '83, president of RLA, to serve as co-chair, making the start of gay and lesbian political unity.

Williams, who was out of town and unavailable for comment, is mentioned frequently with admiration by gays and lesbians at Harvard. "She is a one-woman network." Schatz says of Williams, who is also president of the Black Students Association. Williams pressured GOOD and GSA into considering feminist issues in meetings and into including a discussion of feminism and lesbianism at the GLAD days. Laurie Knight '83-2, a member of GSA and RLA, points out that this year for the first time GSA's membership is "approaching parity" between men and women. "Much of the huge torrent of activity and talk about gay rights has to do with a better integration of women into GSA." Knight says. Why lesbian women chose to direct their political energies toward gay rather than feminist issues when they did is unclear. Knight attributes it to the deterioration of the women's movement on campus. Colker believes that lesbians today have changed. "Lesbians at Harvard now are a different breed. We were pretty much separatists; the women now seem able to see men as feminists. And, on the other hand, men have now taken an interest in feminism."

Despite the influx of lesbian support, the next few months for GOOD organizers were deeply discouraging. "We had very little experience organizing," Schatz recalls. "We called a meeting of GOOD and no one showed up, and we called another meeting and no one showed up and we called yet another meeting and again no one showed up..." He xeroxed 2000 leaflets on gay rights and distributed them at registration in Memorial Hall. He tried to recruit friends to join in, but "most people would only stay for five or ten minutes. It was a very hard thing to stand there." People jeered, whispered and pointed. "But the more I faced things like that, rather than getting submissive, the more angry I got."

The next battle was holding onto the GSA office and getting a gay hotline. The University announced the office was closed, because it wasn't being used, and only after several gay students demonstrated to the administration that it was indeed in use, were they allowed to keep the office--a basement room in Memorial Hall. Schatz also arranged a gay hotline after hearing that a large percentage of the phone calls that Room 13, the student counseling service, receives are related to gay concerns. The phone, with an extension on Schatz's room so he could man it in the wee hours of the morning, rang at all hours. "I would get calls at three in the morning."

With a phone in place, GOOD started to gear up for GLAD Day that spring. It collected funds from the Houses, and rented out the film. "The World is Out," an award-winning documentary with interviews from gay men and women around the nation.